List of University of California, Santa Cruz people

This page lists notable alumni and faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz; alumni may have attended without graduating.

Notable alumni

Academia

• William Drea Adams – President of Colby College, Waterville, Maine
• Chester Dunning, - B.A. 1971 - Historian at Texas A&M University who specializes in Russian studies
• Alexander Gonzalez, Ph.D 1979 – President of California State University, Sacramento
• Steven G. Krantz, B.A - Professor of Mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis. Winner of the Chauvenet Prize.
• Annette Lareau, B.A. 1974 - Professor of Sociology at University of Pennsylvania
• Tod Machover – MIT Media Lab
• Patricia Nelson Limerick - Professor of History at University of Colorado and a leading historian of the American West
• Austin E. Quigley, Ph.D - Dean of Columbia College of Columbia University
• John R. Rickford, B.A. 1971 - Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University and African American Vernacular English or Ebonics expert.

Arts and letters

• Will Bagley, BA 1971 - historian of 1800 West
• Michael A. Bellesiles, BA 1975 - controversial historian
• Susie Bright - Writer, sex activist and sex therapy focus leader
• Laurie Garrett, BA 1975 - Newsday science reporter and author, Pulitzer Prize winner
• Philip Kan Gotanda - Playwright
• Reyna Grande, BA 1999 - Author, American Book Award winner
• bell hooks, PhD 1983 - Feminist social critic
• Miranda July - Filmmaker and writer
• Jayne Ann Krentz BA 1970 - New York Times best selling author
• Deborah Madison BA 1968 - cookbook author, founding chef of the Greens Restaurant
• Steve Martini, BA 1968 - Best-selling mysteries author
• Kent Nagano, BA 1974 - Conductor of the Los Angeles Opera and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra
• Larry Polansky, BA 197 - Composer
• Dana Priest, BA 1981 - Washington Post reporter and author. Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting and 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service
• Lore Sjöberg - Writer
• Andrea Smith, PhD 2002 - Cherokee activist and author
• David Talbot - BA - Founder of Salon.com, author, journalist
• Mark Teague - BA 1985—Author and illustrator of children's books
• Hector Tobar - BA - Los Angeles Times columnist, author, Winner of Pulitzer Prize in 1992.
• Bernt Wahl, BA 1984, BS 1986 - Author and entrepreneur, Fulbright Fellow. November 1985 coined UC Santa Cruz motto "Fiat Slug".
• Annie Wells, BA 1981 - Photographer, filmmaker, winner of Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1997
• Lawrence Weschler, 1974 - Author
• Richard White (historian) – Historian of American West, Native American history, and environmental history; MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1995
• Daniel James Wolf, BA 1983 - Composer
• Laurence Yep – Author

Business

• Susan Wojcicki, MS - Senior Vice President, Advertising at Google

Entertainment and broadcasting

• John Brown, BA - Entity who appeared on ego trip's The (White) Rapper Show
• Jello Biafra - Singer and songwriter of the Dead Kennedys
• Brannon Braga, award-winning film writer for Star Trek Generations and an Executive Producer of 24 (TV series)
• Bill Carter, BA, Politics, Economics - Documentary film director and author
• Brett Dennen, Singer, songwriter
• Cary Joji Fukunaga, BA 1999 - Sundance Award winning filmmaker (Sin Nombre)
• Matthew Gray Gubler, BA – Actor (Criminal Minds), and Director
• Richard Harris - National Public Radio science reporter
• Victor Krummenacher - Bassist for Camper Van Beethoven, Monks of Doom, etc.
• David Lowery, BA 1984 - Singer and songwriter for Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker
• Camryn Manheim, BA 1984 - Actress
• Stephen Mirrione, BA - Academy Award-winning film editor
• Marti Noxon, BA - TV Producer
• Bradley Nowell, Singer and songwriter with Sublime
• Joe Palca, PhD 1982 - National Public Radio science reporter
• Rebecca Romijn - Supermodel, actress
• Maya Rudolph, BA 1995 - SNL cast member
• Jonathan Segel, BA 1985 - Composer/Multi-Instrumentalist for Camper Van Beethoven, etc.
• Andy Samberg, BA - SNL cast member
• Akiva Schaffer, BA -SNL writer, filmmaker
• Tim Schafer - Game designer for Lucasarts and founder of Doublefine Productions
• John D. Scott, BA 1987 - Singer, songwriter, voice instructor
• Nikki Silva, BA 1973 - One half of The Kitchen Sisters, who are regularly featured on NPR
• Chris Tashima - Actor, Academy Award-winning filmmaker
• Jesse Thorn, BS - Host of PRI's The Sound of Young America
• Ally Walker, BS - Actress known for roles in Profiler, Sons of Anarchy, and The Protector
• Gillian Welch, BA 1990 - Singer and songwriter
• Rich Wilkes, BA 1988 - Write, Filmmaker (Billy Madison, Stoned Age, Beer Money, XXX, Airheads)

Law

• Ellen Leonida, defense attorney for Scott Dyleski
• Joan E. Donoghue, BA 1978 - judge on the International Court of Justice

Politics and public life

• Bettina Aptheker PhD - leader in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement
• Katherine Canavan, BA - former United States Ambassador to the Republic of Botswana and United States Ambassador to Lesotho
• John Doolittle, BA 1972 - Member, U.S. House of Representatives, California 4th Congressional District
• Ron Gonzales, BA - Mayor of San Jose, California, 1999–2006
• Victor Davis Hanson, BA 1975 - Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
• John Laird, BA 1972 - California Natural Resources Agency Secretary, former California Assemblyman, and Mayor of Santa Cruz
• Azadeh Moaveni, BA - journalist and writer
• Huey P. Newton, BA 1974, PhD 1980 - Co-founding member of the Black Panther Party
• Aaron Peskin, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member
• Drummond Pike, BA 1970 - Tides Foundation founder, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur.
• Art Torres, BA 1968 - California Democratic Party Chairman, former California State Senator
• James Charles Kopp, BA Biology 1976 - murderer of Buffalo abortion doctor Bernard Slepian in 1998; convicted in 2003 and serving sentence of 25 years to life

Science

• Richard Bandler MA 1975 - co-creator of Neuro Linguistic Programming
• Joseph DeRisi, BA 1992 - Molecular biologist, Professor at UC San Francisco, MacArthur Fellow, known for work on SARS and malaria
• J. Doyne Farmer, PhD 1981 - Physics Researcher at Santa Fe Institute
• Yoav Freund, Phd 1993 - Computer Scientist, Professor at University of California, San Diego, Invented AdaBoost
• John Grinder - PhD 1971 - Linguist, co-creator of Neuro-linguistic programming
• Steven Hawley, PhD 1977 - Astronaut
• Geoffrey Marcy, PhD 1982 - Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley and planet finder
• Marc Okrand, BA 1972 - Linguist, creator of the Klingon language
• Rob Shaw, PhD 1980–1988 Macarthur Award for work on Chaos Theory
• Pamela Silver, BA 1974 - Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, first Director of Harvard University Systems Biology Graduate Program, Synthetic Biologist
• Kathryn D. Sullivan, BS 1973 - Astronaut

Sports

• Anton Peterlin, soccer player

Notable faculty

• Ralph Abraham - Professor Emeritus of Mathematics; notable for founding the Visual Mathematics Institute and for his pioneering work on Chaos Theory
• Bettina Aptheker - Professor of Feminist Studies and History
• Elliot Aronson - Professor Emeritus of Psychology, author of The Social Animal and Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion after Columbine, creator of the Jigsaw Classroom model, and one of the few psychologists to win the American Psychological Association's highest honor in all three fields.
• Reyner Banham - late Professor of Art History and a pre-eminent architectural historian, in particular of the modern era.
• Tom Banks - Professor of Physics. Known for work on string theory, elementary particle physics, and cosmology.
• Norman O. Brown - late Professor Emeritus of Humanities
• James Clifford - Professor of History of Consciousness. Renowned for groundbreaking publications of postmodernist and postcolonial interpretations of anthropology and ethnography: Writing Culture and The Predicament of Culture and Routes.
• David Cope - Professor of Music; notable for his experiments in A.I. and computer-created musical compositions
• Angela Davis - Professor of History of Consciousness; writer and activist
• John Dizikes - Professor Emeritus of American Studies, author, won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award.
• Frank Drake - Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Proposed the Drake Equation; member of the AAAS (elected 1974).
• Sandra M. Faber - Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics. Instrumental in inventing Cold dark matter theory and fundamental work in the field of Galaxy formation and evolution. Member of the NAS (elected 1985), the AAAS (elected 1989), and the American Philosophical Society (elected 2001).
• Alison Galloway - Forensic Anthropologist who worked in identifying the physical remains of Laci Peterson in the Scott Peterson Trial
• Donna Haraway - Professor of History of Consciousness. Doctorate in biology. Often cited author of feminist history of science and culture studies of cyborg. Books: Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science and Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.
• David Haussler Professor of Biomolecular Engineering. He and his team assembled the public draft human genome and developed the UCSC Genome Browser as part of the Human Genome Project; member of the AAAS (elected 2006) and the National Academy of Sciences.
• David A. Huffman - Deceased. Founding faculty of the Information and Computer Science Board. Developed the famous Huffman coding
• Frederic Jameson -- Professor of History of Consciousness; cultural critic and theorist of the post-modern. Published the essay, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, a significant investigation into contemporary culture and the political economy.
• Jim Kent -- Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering. Directs the genome browser development and quality assurance staff of the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group; created the computer program that assembled the first working draft of the human genome sequence; participates in the public consortium efforts to produce, assemble, and annotate genomes.
• Tom Lehrer - lecturer in American Studies and Mathematics. Also well known for his satire and songwriting.
• Nathaniel Mackey - poet and editor.
• Dominic W. Massaro - Professor of Psychology and Computer Engineering. Originator of the fuzzy logical model of perception, one of the leading theories of speech perception.
• Claire Ellen Max – member of the AAAS (elected 2002).
• Gordon Mumma - Professor Emeritus of Music, composer
• Richard Abel Musgrave – member of the AAAS (elected 1961).
• Jerry Nelson - Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics. The scientist who pioneered the use of mirror segments, making the Keck telescopes possible, member of the NAS.
• Harry Noller - Professor of Biology. RNA research; member of the AAAS (elected 1969) and the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1992).
• Donald E. Osterbrock – member of the AAAS (elected 1968) and the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1966).
• Joel Primack - Professor of Physics, noted cosmologist; renowned for Cold Dark Matter Theory proposed along with Sandra Faber (see above) and Sir Martin Rees.
• Geoffrey Pullum - Professor of Linguistics and Distinguished Professor of Humanities. Co-author of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language ISBN 0-521-43146-8; member of the AAAS (elected 2003).
• Michael Ellman Soule – member of the AAAS (elected 2005)
• Ben Stein – Former professor of economics more notable for his work as a comedian, actor and political commentator
• Stephen Thorsett - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Dean of Physical and Biological Science. Known for work on properties of compact stars.
• Hayden White – member of the AAAS (elected 1991).
• Jim Whitehead - Chair of Computer Science and creator of WebDAV
• Harold Widom – member of the AAAS (elected 2006).
• Stanford E. Woosley - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Noted for his work on supernova gamma ray bursts. Member of the NAS (elected 2006) and AAAS (elected 2001).
• Karen Tei Yamashita - author and playwright.